All fun things come to an end, so just as well to our visit to the Netherlands. Our flight back to Hawaii, through Seattle, left from Schiphol Airport last Tuesday, March 2 2010, at 11 in the morning, and so we had to get up at around 6 AM since we had to be early due to the enhanced security checks.

By the way, I will write this story in several parts as I have to tell quite a bit, and it will become quite a large article if I had to write it all at once

For some reason I was already awake by the time I was called to get up, but still I had a lot of trouble to get out of bed haha. It’s no wonder really, I was just getting used to the new timezone, a time difference of 11 hours in the winter. Nah, it was not much fun to get up so early. Once we washed ourselves and got dressed, my mother, sister, my daughters Larissa and Isabella, and myself, went towards Schiphol Airport at around 6.30 AM. Of course we got in several traffic jams (which are, in my opinion, the worst in the world in the Netherlands), and somewhere between 8.30 and 9 AM we arrived at the airport.

I wanted to check Isabella and myself in at one of those self-help desks, but we got a notification that I had to go to a manned desk for an additional check. Once we got helped, it turned out that it was about the ESTA (in short: this is some system that has to give non-US residets and non-citizens permission to travel towards the US). However, since I am a greencard holder, I don’t have to request permission, but for some reason they did not know about this (but now they do haha). They had to overrule the system at the desk, and after they did this, they took our suitcases, gave us our boarding passes and they checked the stroller for a ‘gate delivery’ (this means I could use the stroller at the airports between the gates, I really like this service).

After an emotional goodbye, Isabella and I had to leave towards the gate. First we had to go through immigration, where we could go through the EU passports row even though Isabella had to use her US passport (we used this when we entered the Netherlands, so we also had to leave with the same passports. By the way: she never received a stamp on departure, so I need to call to the Netherlands later tonight (it can be a problem when we go back to the Netherlands when her departure is not registered)).

After the immigrations we went on towards the gate, and on our way there I bought a bottle of water. However, after I bought it, it turned out they could not seal the bottle into a bag (you have to do this, otherwise you cannot take the bottle on the plane), so I wanted to return it but even though I never touched the bottle since I paid for it, they could not take it back, she was only allowed to throw it away… well do that then, I told her, I can’t use it on the plane so it is useless to me. It was, however, 9 bucks that I threw away because of that. Stupid. I had more luck at a different location, where they were able to seal the bottle into a bag.

There was a nice row of people waiting at the gate for the last checks, I joined the queue in the rear but a nice lady from Delta (the airline that I flew with) asked me to come with her so I could line up at the priority row, the line for people in first class and those with elite status. This was fun, especially since it went a lot more faster. At the securitychecks I didn’t have to go through the new bodyscanner, probably because I had a baby with me, but I did have to go through the metal detector and I got a full pat down search also. They also manually searched one of my carry on bags, probably because of the baby milk, but I found out in the US that they did not notice me having another bottle with hand sanitizer in my other bag. They shouldn’t have let that one go through security without any check I think.. It doesn’t exactly seem foolproof these new enhanced security checks. They did manually search the whole stroller, however, I also think they could have been more secure with this, Isabella was, for example, allowed to just stay inside her carseat and who knows what could’ve been put under there, it never went through a scanner.

After the security check, we were allowed to board as one of the first people, so we could strap the carseat into the seat. This was really nice, it gives you a lot of time to get the baby and yourself strapped in (and it is also fun to get on an empty plane for once haha). The plane would remain pretty empty, and I positioned myself a few days before the flight on such a way that I might end up with four seats instead of two, of course depending on what other travelers would do. Unfortunately luck was not with me as two other people joined my row of seats. The rows in front of me and behind me remained empty, but other people were faster than me and they could easily lay themselves down in those rows. Oh well, it didn’t matter much in the end as Isabella was awake a lot during the flight, I hardly had time to close my eyes.

We left about 20 minutes delayed, and after a long, but nice, trip with Delta #233, we arrived around noon, local time (9 PM in the Netherlands), in Seattle. This was about half hour ahead of schedule, so the flight was a bit shorter than anticipated, which is nice on such a distance.

Once we landed, I wanted to call my mother and Michelle to tell them that we were safely in the US, but unfortunately I found out that I forgot to charge the battery of my phone (I kind of didn’t expect the battery to be empty after three weeks of having it turned off, guess I was wrong..). So ok, that had to wait until I was in the terminal and could use the internet to call them with Skype. I hoped this wouldn’t take too long because I knew they wanted me to call once I got on the ground, but unfortunately that didn’t go so easily either…

Once Isabella and I left the plane, we had to wait for our stroller at the entrance of the plane. It came up after a short wait but it turned out that the wheels were missing. There was a nice lady from Delta also at the entrance of the airplane who asked the people on the ground to look for the wheels. Once the wheels came up, we tried to attach them back to the stroller but unfortunately it turned out that this was impossible. After a while we found out that a piece inside the wheels was broken. This happened somewhere in Amsterdam, during the flight, or in Seattle. Personally I think the stroller fell out of the plane once they opened the luggage compartment of the plane, and that the wheels broke off at that time.

This was not fun at all. How did I have to bring Isabella around? Carrying her? That could turn out to be fun, I also had the necessary carry-on luggage with me. Fortunately the nice Delta lady offered me to meet up with me behind the immigrations check at the luggage claim belts, and to go to a Delta baggage claim desk after that, to see what they could do and to possibly give me a spare stroller.

I will tell a bit later today how this all ended in the next part of this story, I first have to go to the airport in Honolulu in regards to the broken stroller.

On February 9, 2010, Isabella and I went to the Netherlands for a visit of the family. They had never seen Isabella before, and they haven’t seen me either since 2008, so it was about time to do this. Michelle was unable to join us as she lost all her days off when she gave birth to Isabella.

So I went alone with the baby to the Netherlands. I can tell you that I was really nervous because of that trip as you have to travel for almost 24 hours. Will Isabella cry or not? That was my biggest fear, that Isabella would cry her heart out while we were in a plane full of people. Fortunately it wasn’t all that bad.

Michelle’s last cat, Flamey, also joined us on the trip as she was a present to my mother. Michelle has a pretty bad cat allergy and we decided that we should give this cat to my mom instead, so it would end up in a nice home. That was another factor of my worries, of course, will everything go well with that little one? Cats can be really stressed, and this was a pretty long journey.

Our plane would leave from Honolulu towards Los Angeles at 9.40pm, where it would make a short stop in order to fly on to Minneapolis/St. Paul, where we had to board another plane towards Amsterdam.

We arrived way ahead of time at the airport, but there was already a long row of people who had to be checked in. Because of the cat, we also had to line up in that same row (otherwise we would check in online). Once it was our turn, we had to fill in quite some papers and we had to show them the (health)papers of the cat, and we also had to deal with a broken printer (I wanted to get a receipt for bringing the cat, you never know haha).

So we had to wait for quite some time, and at the end of it all, after a short but emotional goodbye (like said, Michelle would stay all alone on Oahu), I had to hurry towards the gate. Once Isabella and I arrived at the gate, it turned out that everyone was waiting for me, everyone else already boarded, and they wanted to depart.. I can tell you, you will feel pretty embarrassed when you get on the plane at that time.

I quickly installed Isabella in her carseat on the seat next to me, and after one of the flight attendants told me that the cat was also safely on board, we were ready to depart.

Isabella remained pretty quiet during take off. I fed her during the take off, to avoid the popping of her ears. However, she did cry when the seatbelts light turned off. What I personally think is that Isabella was way too tired, she had been awake for most of the afternoon before our flight because her grandmother wanted to see her. Anyways, I grabbed her and walked up and down the airplane with her in my arms, and thankfully that calmed her down (I thought it was terrible, first to hold up a complete plane, and then a crying baby on board.. oh oh oh).

Next to me there was a man, and his family (wife and two kids) sat on the other end of the walkway in the same row. When Isabella and I were walking for a bit, the lady asked me if she could hold Isabella, and try to calm her down. I gave Isabella to her and I got some time to get some things done for myself, and Isabella calmed down even more. The man next to me said he would move to a seat more forward in the plane (the plane was pretty empty), so he could get some sleep and I would have more space to get in and out of my seat. I can tell you that this was very nice.

Isabella calmed down after a short while (fortunately) and I put her back in her seat where she slept for the remainder of the flight. With that, I had two seats for myself (and of course the space under the third seat of Isabella, to stretch my legs) and I had a pretty relaxed flight. Like said, Isabella slept for the remainder of the flight and after about 4.5 hours, we arrived in Los Angeles.

I ate some breakfast in Los Angeles, changed Isabella’s diapers, fed her and shortly after that all it was time again to leave towards Minneapolis.

I was curious to see how the flight to Minneapolis would be, especially because I did not know if I had someone next to me or not. Well, it turned out that this flight was even emptier than the flight coming from Honolulu (and Isabella stayed quiet also, she also slept most of that flight). We left at dawn and a few hours later we arrived in a very white, and very cold, Minneapolis.

In Minneapolis we had to wait for a few hours, which turned out to be ok as the Delta employees needed Flamey’s papers again, the vet that took care of her during that stop needed it. Once it was time to get on board again, we got into a very full flight. Because Isabella didn’t cry so much, I didn’t know exactly what I could expect, it could stay like it was but she could also become restless. The flight attendants were immediately sold by her and didn’t want to give her back, but yeah, they had to work so that was bit of bad luck for them haha.

Isabella also remained pretty quiet during the long flight to Amsterdam. A few times she wanted to cry, when she woke up from some noise for example, but a quick reaction helped a lot. After a long flight we arrived in the dark, and light snow, in the Netherlands. There was only one runway open at Schiphol Airport due to snow earlier that night, and since the wind came from our side, we went from left to right during our approach (I could especially see this when we drove home on the freeway, the planes landing at that time were bouncing a lot).

We got off the plane and went towards customs. At the passport check, I went through ‘all passports’, because of Isabella’s US passport (it turned out later we could also take the other line) and apparently I have a Dutch face because they greeted me in plain Dutch haha.

Near the luggage belt, I asked how it would go with Flamey, where I could expect her, and they told me that she would either be brought to the belt, or to the desk where I was at that time. I then went on to the luggage claim to get our suitcases and once I had those, they also brought Flamey’s crate to the desk. The KLM employee (I think she is from KLM as she was dressed in blue) asked on the radio if it was my cat, and they confirmed it but it looked like there was no cat in the crate…

No cat in the crate? How is that possible? They gave me a confirmation in Minneapolis that she was on board of the plane. But what do you think? Flamey got scared during the flight (I can’t blame her, it is really something for such a creature) and she hid herself under the blanket that we put in the crate for her, so it looked as if there was no cat at all. Luckily she was there, and fortunately she looked healthy also.

The comments from the girls at the desk were nice. Such a beautiful baby and beautiful cat, I had to be a very happy man haha. That was nice, I received a lot of compliments about Isabella anyways, that she is so beautiful, and that she was so nicely quiet during the flight and also because I was so brave to go on such a journey alone with a baby and cat.

One of the ladies offered me to walk me towards the exit, because I had so much with me (you could say I brought too much haha), and once we got to the exit, the customs stopped me. If I had all papers for the cat…

I did my homework and had all kinds of papers with me (USDA papers, EU papers, all kinds of certificates and so on) that one could think of. The woman who asked me for the papers took them with her, and together with 4 or 5 people they looked at them. I really got the impression that they did not really know what they were looking at, or that they knew at all what they were doing. A bit later they told me that they had to make a phone call, and after that call she came back to me and said she was impressed, it did not happen often for someone to have all needed papers.

At that point I felt a bit like “nice, I can see that I am back in the Netherlands”. I also noticed, during my wait time at the exit, that the customs only stopped a certain kind of people for a luggage check.. Welcome to the Netherlands…

Once we were cleared and got out, my mother, sister and daughter Larissa were waiting for us, and after an emotional reunion we went towards Breda.

My first impressions of the Netherlands at that time? It was extremely cold and it looked like everyone was mad on the road. Everyone was in a hurry and went from left to right on the freeway. It is possible that me being tired had something to do with it, but at the other hand, we are not that much in a hurry on Hawaii and we drive a lot easier. I finally could see why Michelle was scared to drive in the Netherlands when she visited me in 2007.

Yes, I could really notice that I haven’t been in the Netherlands for some time, I felt a bit like a tourist in my own country.

Like I promised in my tweets yesterday, I would upload some pictures of our visit to Maui. However, when I was watching the pictures and videos today, I noticed that we didn’t had that much pictures, and they’re actually mostly whale pictures and not much of our visit to Maui itself.. and as for the videos, they are also a bit disappointing as we didn’t even have enough to edit it to a normal video.

I can explain, though, we wanted to film some on board but I was mostly busy with my photo camera, and Michelle had her hands full on the baby, who woke up while we were on the ship and got hungry. And, well, the number of pictures we made of Maui are a bit disappointing because we left both cameras in the back of our car the whole time, instead of the front so we could easily make some pictures.

I guess we will have to go to Maui again soon to make some more pictures and videos.. we might do it multiple days, so we can do a bit more than just watch whales from a ship.

Anyways, I should make a short report of our trip to Maui. Like I said before, i was especially curious of how Isabella would behave in the airplane. She usually is a very sweet and quiet girl, but yeah, how would she behave when the air pressure will be different and when she gets her ears popping? Well, it all went a lot better than I expected. She was ok with everything and I don’t think she was impressed by it all, even though I had my own ears popping quite a few times haha (I have it worse on these short flights anyways, it’s like they climb at a faster rate with those small planes). The turbulence during the landing in Maui was also no problem to her, she went to sleep because of the rocking haha. No, I doubt I would have worry for when we make the long trip to the Netherlands.

Going through security with Isabella was also pretty easy. I read a lot up front to see how it would be, and I also read quite some horror stories, but we didn’t experience any of that, everything went extremely fast and easy.. it was almost like I traveled alone.

Once we got to Maui, we first picked up our rental car, went to Walmart for some bottles of pre-made milk for Isabella, and then we ate some food at Sam Sato, a local restaurant, as Michelle love their dry noodles.

After that we drove from Kahului to Lahaina, on the west side of Maui, and we noticed that the land there was so extremely dry. I already read about it a couple of weeks ago in the paper that some areas didn’t get enough rain, but I never expected it to be this bad. It really looked like a desert at some spots.

Once we got to Lahaina, we weren’t sure if we wanted to make a boat trip to watch whales. They announced that we might see high waves, as high as 25-30 feet, around the isles, and well, you don’t want to be on a small boat with that kind of waves haha. But fortunately it looked like the water was really calm, the sun came through and all of the sudden we noticed a whale jumping up from the water, a bit like the one in the following picture:

No, unfortunately this isn’t made by me, we didn’t see any other whale jumping up like that unfortunately. Michelle just noticed this picture and her reaction was “Hey, we didn’t see them like that during our boat trip, we have to go back, we only saw lazy whales” haha. We will do that for sure, it was really fun to do.

We bought some tickets for the boat trip and boarded shortly after. We have seen quite a few whales, and even though it was not like the one above, it was still very much worth to do it. It was really beautiful to see it all. But ok, I know some people want to see the pictures instead of me talking, so here I’ll keep quiet for now so you can see the pictures. Some comments are below the pictures as usual

Right, I think this should do it for now. I promise to have more different shots the next time we are in Maui (and we might have some underwater shots, we wanted to make a submerged tour but we didn’t had enough time for that now).

On the first pictures of the humpbacks you can see a mother with her calf, and on the last photo’s you can see a female with a male between us and the female. He probably did this to protect her from us because, well, imagine yourself that our ship would want to mate with her, that’s something he obviously didn’t want haha.

After we returned ashore, we drove towards Kihei, where we wanted to get some Shave Ice, but Isabella became a bit cranky, she was tired and didn’t sleep much, she got hungry and she needed a clean diaper.. well, I would be cranky too in her case haha. So we parked at a beach park and stayed there for a bit while we relaxed and watched the sun going down on sea.

Once Isabella was ready, and we got hungry, we went back to Kahului where we wanted to eat at Koho. And what do you think, once we finally sat at our table, Isabella started to cry pretty hard… I didn’t know where to look, it was so busy and then your baby starts to cry.. pffff… thankfully she was quiet once Michelle held her and she could see the ceiling fans (she loves those, especially when they’re on haha), and then we could still enjoy our food, which was very good in my opinion.

After Koho we bought some donuts at Krispy Kreme, who make really delicious donuts. And after that we went towards the airport of Kahului so we could fly back to Honolulu.

By the way, I really noticed how easy it is to become prejudice thanks to the terrorist threats and such, we had a pretty odd person on board of our plane (we saw him already at the check-in) that raised some questions with me (and with the flight attendants as well as I could hear (we sat on the front row in the first class, so you hear everything they say)) and there were a few more people who didn’t make me completely feel at ease.. it is a prejudice, and probably nothing special, so it is kind of sad when you think about it, but yeah, thanks to all those negative stories in the news, you sometimes think twice. I really notice you look more around these days during flying.

Oh well, the flight back went pretty smooth. We sat pretty comfortable in the first class, and Isabella had fun as well I think. There was no turbulence when we arrived (which is pretty nice because those planes are very small) and the flight was also over in no-time, we were hardly airborne for 30 minutes haha.

Right, like said, next time we will have more different pictures, and probably also a video

Last thursday it was time: the journey towards Michelle in Hawaii had to be taken.

I didn’t sleep much last wednesday on thursday night, we (and with ‘we’ I mean my mother, sister and daughter) had to get up at 6 am in the morning (and I woke up a lot during that night also) because we expected traffic on the road to Schiphol Airport from where my flight would leave towards Minneapolis/St. Paul at around 10.40 am.

We did not thought we experienced a lot of trafficjams on our way towards the airport but this seemed incorrect as it took us more than hour longer than when there would have been no traffic at all. This was a bit sad as we hoped to be able to drink something at the airport but unfortunately we did not have any time for this as they were boarding the plane already.

We made a few pictures while we were waiting for the bagage drop off, I think I look quite tired on them but yah, that is not so weird.. anyways, here are a few of these photos:

I had to go to some other desk after the bagage drop off since I had about 5-7 kilos overbagage in both suitcases, nice, that has cost me another 100 euros extra but oh well, sending it through mail would have been 55 euro for that weight and then I would have to wait several weeks before I would get it in my hands.

Like said, I had to go directly through the passport check as they were already boarding the plane. I had to say goodbye to my mother, Suzanne and Larissa which was pretty emotional, but that isn’t so weird I think, and I went through the check. Now I had to go straight towards the gate as they, according to the data, would be about to close it. ‘Fortunately’ there was a long row of people waiting (just like last time and I think it will always be like this as you have to undergo an interview for the United States and they check all your stuff also) so I could quickly buy a few bottles of water and get my money changed all well within time.

Now it was boarding and on to the States. They made a few pictures of the plane while I was leaving (I did not make them myself of cousrse haha):

The first flight, the one to Minneapolis/St. Paul, must have been a blessed flight. There were both a Carmelite and a Catholic priest on board, I could recognize them quite easily as the Carmelite was wearing his ‘monk outfit’ and the Father had his black suit with white board around his neck. A funny detail: My grandmother, who recently passed away, used to go to Carmelite services and my dad, who also passed away, used to be a Roman-Catholic, who knows, they might have been with me on that flight

The trip was nice, we had some turbulence over the North Sea but after about 15 to 20 minutes it was all normal. I had a seat with extra legspace and I have to say that this is indeed worth the money, it saves a bit compared to a normal seat.

When I arrived at Minneapolis/St. Paul, I went to the row for new immigrants, well row, it was my turn right away and I was only asked a few little questions and after the immigration officer checked my documents I heard ‘welcome to the United States’ and I could go on. I made a joke to the officer a bit earlier that she must be a fast reader as she was going through the large pile of papers quite fast, she had to laugh and told me she only wanted to know if certain documents were among the papers. All in all it was not a big deal, I was through immigration within 5 minutes and that was a relieve when you compare it to the process up until receiving the visa which felt it was like taking forever.

After this I could get my suitcases and I could drop them off right again for my connecting flight to Honolulu, which had a stopover in Seattle. I grabbed a quick bite (I took a Black Angus Steak sub, just like the other times I was at Minneapolis. It is quite greasy but very yummy) and went straight to the plane after that. It was a short stopover so I didn’t had to wait too long.

The flight towards Seattle went also smoothly, I could talk a bit to the people next to me which was nice. Near Seattle I got a short tour (from above) about the scenery, such as Mount Rainier (a very large vulcano) and the house of Bill Gates. We arrived about 30-35 minutes early in Seattle and since we had to leave the plane during this stop (they clean the plane, refuel it and such) I grabbed another bite which I could really use as I was getting quite tired.

We could board a bit later for Honolulu. The first part, I think this took about an hour or even longer, we experienced quite some turbulence. It is weird, the turbulence above the North Sea was a bit scary but you’re more like ‘whatever’ when you’re flying for a whole day. After a while of turbulence we got an easier flight, I could sleep here for about an hour (which was really needed) and after over 5 hours flying from Seattle we arrived in Honolulu.

The first thing I thought when I got off the plane (and this is probably due to me being tired and packing myself quite warm on board of the plane) is that I thought it was quite cold (and that with about 24-25 Centigrade haha). When I walked towards the lugage claim section I heard two people talking in Dutch so I turned around and asked them if they were Dutch and yep, there were two more Dutchies on board of the plane, it really shows how small the world is, you can find Dutch people everywhere (which happens to me every time, on my previous trip to Hawaii I met Dutch people and also when I went to China, I’ve seen a lot of Dutch people there..).

Anyways, I went towards the claim area and Michelle was waiting for me, I can tell you it was really great to see her finally again and I’m happy to say it was the same for her

So, we now reached saturday morning (which means it is Saturday night in the Netherlands haha) and I can tell you that I am suffering quite the jetlag. I haven’t slept much last night, probably because I took a very long nap yesterday afternoon (which should have been a short power nap), the short nap took about 4 hours and I was really in a deep night sleep which had the result that I didn’t sleep much last night haha… oh well, it’s going to be tough today, I will go to bed like normal tonight and then I should be able to get rid of the worst (at least it was like that the last time).

We will probably get some groceries today, we wanted to do this yesterday but we didn’t manage to do it anymore haha… it’s nice that island rhytm.. it really is like I heard an ex-colleague telling me before about Curacao: “Missed the bus? There will be another one tomorrow”, with other words:there is an other day tomorrow. But yah, since we didn’t do it, we had to eat out yesterday so I had some great Kalua pork as breakfast/lunch and in the evening I had some nice Korean food.

Yeah, I could get used to this

We set a date last Thursday for when I will leave my country to go to Michelle and we booked tickets right away also. I will leave on Thursday October 2nd, so that is about 6 weeks until it is time. Exciting!

I can tell you that I became quite nervous. There are a lot of things that I have to arrange within 4 weeks, like stopping all kinds of subscriptions and selling my household as I will leave my place the latest on September 18. And next to that, I also have to look into what I want to take with me and what I will have to throw away, such as with my clothes and other personal belongings.

I read the news of Hawaii on a frequent base and I have to say that sometimes I think it is quite scary. Yes, it kinda gives me cold feet (lucky for me it is nice and warm over there so I don’t mind my cold feet much then haha). But ok, I think I wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t care about things.

I also think that you are home wherever you feel yourself at home and I didn’t even want to leave when I was at Michelle on Hawaii because I felt myself at home over there. And these thoughts are exactly where I think about when I get a bit nervous; I could’ve been on Hawaii for almost a year now if I listened to my feelings indeed back then, my mind told me not to do it, though. I don’t think I could leave my family with the worries of sorting my things out.

Oh well, I’m sure we’ll beat ourselves through it all, just about six weeks left and then it will be another long journey (21 hours including stop-overs) to fly to the rock.